


Echoes of Me

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Criminal Minds, Dollhouse
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer Reid discovers someone uncannily familiar while on a case in California. He has to find her again, but isn’t expecting things to go so far…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Me

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers** : S5 for Criminal Minds, mid S2-ish for Dollhouse

“Dr. Reid? This one’s for you.” Reid looked up from his notes as the plainclothes officer waved in another of the university’s staff into his borrowed office. To avoid alarming the unsub, questioning professors in his most likely classes had to be done with discretion. And Reid, of everyone on the team, could actually successfully pass as an academic. “Pass” perhaps being too mild a word. He fit in with the climate here so seamlessly that he’d already had a student try to wander in, mistaking him for a TA. 

“Dr. Reid? I’m Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn, from Engineering.” The professor couldn’t have been any older than Reid; indeed, he might have had a year or two on her. Brunette, vivaciously pretty, and plainly dressed. Muted colors, business-casual, and slightly disheveled, with a cardigan thrown over everything to ward off the air-conditioned chill, as far from the more formal and image-conscious professors as Reid was from Hotchner or Rossi. One of Dr. Tripplehorn’s arms was possessively cradled around a bundle of papers, the other steadied a satchel on her hip.

She gave him a small, tight-lipped smile and raised her hand in a half-wave of greeting. Reid froze partway through an almost identical motion, blinked once, and gestured to the chair across from him.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” he said distractedly, and quickly scanned a card that had been paperclipped to her file. “Dr. Tripplehorn, you’ve only been at the university for three weeks?”

“Yes, I’m filling in for Dr. Raymond. He needed to finish his research project, but he also needed to work one-one-one with his doctoral candidate students. I was happy to help out; he only wanted the best for his class,” she said earnestly.

“You do realize why I’m here?” Reid asked. Dr. Tripplehorn was fairly calm about the whole situation, but some academics could bury themselves so far away from the real world that they never realized the danger all around them.

“The shootings, of course. I’ll do anything I can to help,” Tripplehorn said, learning forward.

The cadence of Tripplehorn’s speech sounded very familiar to Reid, uncannily so, and he had to mentally shake his head to refocus his attention on the task at hand.

“We’re trying to get a profile out discretely. A campus-wide announcement would likely cause the unsub to go into hiding. We hoped that long-time professors would recognize these behaviors in their students.” 

Dr. Tripplehorn shook his head at his warning, interrupting him. “Dr. Reid, I haven’t been here very long, but I’ve read everything my students have written, and I’ve met with them all on a personal basis several times. I have an excellent memory. Tell me who you’re looking for.”

She listened attentively as Reid described an intelligent, highly organized young man, who often felt overlooked and constantly sought approval from authority figures. When that approval had been denied, he would lash out. 

“Initially in small ways, perhaps in letters of complaint, escalating to vandalism, and now murder,” Reid concluded.

“Scott Walker,” Tripplehorn said immediately, her face draining of blood. “I never met him personally, but he tried for extra credit, anything he could to get an extension on his due dates. He had some interesting theories, but his experiments had flaws and Dr. Raymond couldn’t let him go forward. He sent letters to Dr. Raymond’s office; he let me see them so I’d be informed if Scott showed up again…”

“Do you have them still?” Reid asked urgently.

“No, they’re back at my office, but I remember what they said. I remember anything I read.”

Before Reid could react to that, Dr. Tripplehorn was quickly reciting the content of a dozen letters, polite complaints thinly veiling a desire to hurt because he’d been denied. It was exactly what the profile had predicted.

“I need to call my unit chief.”

A minute on the phone with Hotchner to keep him up to date, and two with Garcia on a conference call, and she’d pulled up enough corroborating evidence in Scott Walker’s public records to make him their most likely suspect.

“Reid, we’re heading to Walker’s apartment right now. You gather as much of the evidence as you can there, and then we’ll meet you back at the precinct. Good work.” Hotch’s terse words only meant he was particularly busy, simultaneously getting into his bulletproof vest, alerting the police officers, and directing the rest of the team while still carrying on a conversation with both Reid and Garcia.

The call ended, and Reid turned back to Dr. Tripplehorn, her face pinched with worry.

“Dr. Tripplehorn, I’ll need to get those letters for evidentiary purposes, but your help has been invaluable,” he said sincerely, and saw her relax immediately.

“Of course!” she said, getting out of her chair. “Your team…” she hesitated. “They won’t hurt Mr. Walker if they don’t have to, will they?”

“If he surrenders, he won’t be harmed,” Reid promised. She looked relieved, and began to lead him towards her office. Reid followed her down the wood-paneled corridors just a pace behind. He had figured out what was bothering him about her after a minute in her presence, but couldn’t say anything. His first thought, upon meeting a woman who spoke and moved just like him, was that Morgan was playing some kind of elaborate joke. But after looking at Dr. Tripplehorn’s records and hearing her speak, he’d dismissed the idea. More information was needed.

“Dr. Tripplehorn? Where are you from?” Reid asked tentatively.

“Las Vegas. Some of Dr. Raymond’s friends have a lunchtime poker game, and they banned me after two hands,” she said with a bit of a smile.

“Ah.”

“I learned to do my best, even if people don’t always like me for it. No one appreciates a twelve-year-old high school student throwing off the grading curve.” Dr. Tripplehorn’s smile had turned sad.

“I… know exactly what you mean,” Reid said faintly.

Dr. Tripplehorn paused outside her temporary office and looked back at him with wonder.

“You really do too, don’t you?” she asked.

Reid nodded numbly.

“I was beaten up so many times…”

“Shoved into lockers.”

“Well, we showed them, right? A doctor of Engineering and an FBI profiler.” Dr. Tripplehorn’s smile had turned almost triumphant. The door clicked open under her hand, and Dr. Tripplehorn went right to a locked filing cabinet to get Scott Walker’s letters. “There. I hope these help.”

“They will. I…” Reid paused, forcibly struck by how much the desk top looked liked his back at the BAU. He had the feeling he could accurately tell the contents of each and every drawer. “Your parents must be so proud,” Reid said, testing, and watched her reaction.

“I know they are,” she said, looking a bit wistful and sad. Reid wondered if he’d misread her and just put his foot in it again.

“I didn’t mean-. I’m sorry.”

“No! No, they’re not dead. My father… My mother wasn’t… well.” Dr. Tripplehorn made a swift and subtle gesture towards her head. “I took care of her. It was hard, but she’s getting excellent care now, and I write to her all the time. She likes reading about my adventures.”

Reid had to grip the side of the desk as he felt his knees go weak.

“Are you all right?” she asked, reaching out to him.

“I’m-. You-,” Reid was nearly sputtering, completely at a loss for words in his shock.

Reid’s phone rang, and he automatically answered it, Garcia’s cheerful voice filling his ear.

“We got him, Boy Wonder. “One Scott Walker is in custody, and being very annoying talkative about his heinous crimes, if Derek’s complaints are to be believed. Hotch wants you back ASAP so we can wrap this thing up and get you all back home.”

“It’s Jack’s birthday tomorrow,” Reid realized, remembering that most of the team had been wrangled into helping Hotch cope with his son’s entire pre-school class coming over. 

“Yes indeed, and you are in both my and his good graces for cracking this case so early and making sure this party can go off without a hitch. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get balloons delivered…”

Reid listened to Garcia’s cheerful chatter with half his attention as Dr. Tripplehorn went to answer a knock on her door. A tall, strong-looking man in a suit spoke to her briefly, and she nodded in agreement with whatever he was saying. Strange, the man didn’t look like a college student or another professor, or even a grad student. If anything, he reminded Reid of Morgan; he had the same watchful air as an agent. But the local field office hadn’t had any agents to spare, and the body language between the stranger and Tripplehorn was wrong for him to be a boyfriend.

“Dr. Reid, I have to do something,” she said apologetically, softly interrupting him. “It was really good to meet you, under the circumstances. I’m glad I could help.”

“Likewise, Dr. Tripplehorn,” Reid said, speaking in pure reaction, unable to process anything new.

“Alecia,” she corrected gently.

“Spencer,” he managed.

She reached out to clasp his hand briefly, her skin warm and soft, and then she was gone.

“Boy Genius, are you even listening to me?” Garcia asked, wrenching Reid’s attention back to his phone. “Detective Martinez will drive you back to the precinct.”

Reid mumbled something in agreement and hung up. He began to slowly walk towards his temporary office, and stopped after a half-dozen steps. The phone was back at his ear as he ran after Alecia.

“Garcia, I need you to look up any information on a Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn, temporary professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.”

“Ok, I can do that, but who is she?” Reid could hear Garcia typing away in the background.

“She’s the one that identified Scott Walker.” Reid dodged a janitor mopping the floor and almost slipped on the wet stone.

“Ok, ok, Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn, age twenty-seven, Christ she’s younger than you, doctorates in Engineering, Mathematics, and Chemistry, says she grew up in Las Vegas and moved to South Dakota when she was fourteen- whoa, that’s weird.” Garcia paused in her datastream, and Reid could hear the puzzlement in her voice as she rattled off an uncomfortably familiar background.

Reid had been all but sprinting through the corridors, and couldn’t find where Alecia had went. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes. Where could she have gone?

“Garcia, can you access the university security cameras for the exterior of Etcheverry Hall?” he asked desperately.

“Yes…. I… can. Let me look… Reid, she’s not there. I’m looking, looking…” Reid could almost feel Garcia’s eyes scanning each corner of the building as he kept moving, looking for any hint of her or her friend.

“She was with a tall man, early thirties, short dark hair, strong build, gray suit, about five minutes ago,” he said desperately.

There were several more moments of agonizing silence, and then Garcia came back.

“Reid, she got into a van with him. Willingly,” she said gently. 

“Are you sure? Garcia-.”

“Trust me sir, I have seen enough creepy creepy abductions to know when a girl is trying to say no, and she wasn’t. Maybe this guy is just a friend?” she suggested.

“What about her records?” Reid continued stubbornly.

“I’ll grant you that they are uncannily familiar, but there’s no sign of tampering on these files, and believe me, I’ve been checking. References, birth certificates, education, even her Facebook page shows pictures of her with friends and co-workers at all ages. Her published research papers are through South Dakota State, and cover every year she’s been employed there…” Garcia paused, and Reid could almost hear a shrug on the other end of the line. “Reid, she looked pretty weird on the surface, but she didn’t go to your schools, and graduated from high school in a different state. This looks pretty kosher.”

Reid was about to protest when his phone beeped at him. 

“Your lord and master calls, Wonderboy. I’m out.” The phone clicked, and Hotch picked up.

“Reid, officer Martinez is wondering where you are. Did you get those letters?”

Reid looked from one end of the corridor to another, empty and echoing, and sighed silently.

“Yes, I got the letters. I’m on my way back.”

\-----

_BAU, Quantico. One week later_

Reid had Garcia burn him the few seconds of tape that showed Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn leaving Etcheverry Hall. She hadn’t asked what he wanted it for, nor had she bothered with legal niceties. He had the DVD in his hands ten minutes after he asked, without a single word spoken to anyone else on the team.

The short tape showed Alecia walking out of the building, talking with the man in the suit in a familiar way. She definitely knew him, trusted him, and was familiar with him. Him showing up at the university was not out of the ordinary, because she showed absolutely no signs of hesitation. The man opened up the passenger side door for her, politely, and Alecia said something to him, looked back at the building and smiled. She sat down in the van, the man got into the driver’s seat, and they drove away. The license plate had been obscured from the angle; Reid had checked it three times.

Uncannily familiar. That’s what Garcia had called Alecia. But not identical. And now she was gone. Dr. Raymond had returned later that afternoon after she had gone, and Dr. Tripplehorn had returned to her former position at South Dakota State University. Her assistant had informed Reid that the doctor had taken a vacation after working so hard in California, and wouldn’t be able to take calls until she had returned. 

“And when will that be?” Reid had asked, as politely as he was able.

“A couple weeks, and after that she’s going to be doing some pretty heavy-duty research. But I’ll pass your message along…?”

“Spencer. Dr. Spencer Reid.” 

“Dr. Reid. I’ll let her know.”

After that call, Reid had watched the video several more times, trying to glean some information out of it that he might have missed. He’d ended up watching it until his eyes blurred. By his fifth viewing, Reid knew there was an ugly name for what he was feeling.

Obsession.

It didn’t stop him until the tenth viewing, when he realized that nothing else was going to appear in the background, and that obsession rarely did any good, even when it was used on the side of right.

It disturbed him more than a little that it had taken him so long to remember that. Reid took a deep breath, tried to distance himself a little, and _focused_.

\-----

_L.A. Dollhouse, three weeks later_

“Did I fall asleep?”

“For a little while.”

“Shall I go now?”

“If you like.”

Echo emerged from the chair, vaguely smiling and apparently unaware of the role she’d played this afternoon. Another roll in the hay for a discerning Dollhouse client, nothing she hadn’t done a dozen times before. Except that now there was a difference. Her smile wasn’t quite as vague, her responses were a little more aware, and the books she’d filched from somewhere she was actually reading at a ferocious rate, not just puzzling out a word here and there.

There was a slight knowing look in her eye when she left Topher’s office, a kind of amusement at the routine as Dr. Saunders looked her over and pronounced her in good health. It was subtle, as if Paul hadn’t been spending most of his waking moments around Echo, he might not have noticed it.

But he did, and he could easily time when her improved memory had started: last month when she’d been imprinted with that genius professor for three weeks. They’d had to terminate that engagement abruptly when they’d realized the FBI had been questioning her and other staff members about students they knew. It had required a lot of fancy computer cover-ups and the use of some of the Dollhouse’s PR personnel to fake being bosses and assistants, according to Topher, but it had turned out all right. 

In Echo’s case, more than all right.

A day after they’d wiped Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn and imprinted her with a saucy pirate wench for someone’s birthday bash, she’d startled the hell out of him by remembering her name was Echo. From there, her memory had only gotten better. Not perfect, but better.

And sometimes that was more than a little startling. The next day, Paul was driving Echo from her latest engagement, when languid and mostly silent “Clarissa” unexpectedly had something to say.

“Paul, I need you to warn him. Tell him about me.”

Paul jumped in his seat and managed to avoid crashing the van when Echo spoke up from the back. No more Southern drawl and slow, deliberate delivery, this was decidedly Echo’s more energetic and clipped tone, though impeded by the imprint.

“You’re back?” he asked, catching her eye in the rearview mirror briefly. 

“I’m always here, it just takes me time to find my way out…”

“”We nearly got into a crash, so warn me next time,” Paul admonished.

“I… will,” Echo said. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated hard, dragging her own memories to the forefront of her mind.

“Warn who?” Paul asked.

“Spencer,” she said with conviction.

“Spencer?” 

“Spencer…” Echo paused, thinking hard through her imprint of demure debutant. “Reid.”

“Do I know him?”

“You… saw him. Last month. At the university.”

Paul choked. “The FBI profiler? You want me to tell him about you?” Paul had been careful to not stay long in the profiler’s presence on purpose. The FBI was too big for every agent to know every other agent, but Paul knew his own tale of disgrace had to be an office horror story by now. And profilers had a reputation for putting pieces together that most would rather keep apart.

“Yes. He’s looking for me. I know it. He wants to find me.” With every passing minute, Echo was sounding more grounded and solid, more _her_.

“Do you want him to find you?” Paul asked, wanting to get her reasoning before he counseled her against this madness.

“More than anything in the world.” The look in Echo’s eyes, even through the mirror, made Paul flinch with its intensity.

“Echo, why? Why get him involved?”

Echo shook her head. “He could help free the others, and he would want to. But I don’t want him to get involved. Not… too close.” She reached up and squeezed Paul’s shoulder in acknowledgment of his own loss. He’d tried to find Echo, had gotten too close, and had nearly lost everything.

“Ok,” Paul nodded slowly. “Ok, how do you want to do this?”

“He needs to know what he’s dealing with. How powerful this is, and how far it goes.”

“How is telling him about the Dollhouse going to stop him from getting too close?”

“He doesn’t know he’s playing with fire. But he’ll do better if he figures it out himself. Alpha sent you information about me. Send some to Spencer, the same way,” she urged.

“I don’t suppose you know his address?” Paul muttered, not liking the plan, but willing to help. Willing to take any steps forward to deal with this nightmare they had found themselves in.

Echo closed her eyes for a second and her face took on an inquisitive, almost childlike quality. Paul had seen that look before, on Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn. Then she opened her eyes and casually rattled off an address in Quantico.

\-----

_BAU, Quantico, three days later_

“Reid, is there something going on with you?”

Reid blinked as Morgan’s question penetrated, and quickly shook his head.

“I know we’re not supposed to profile each other, but I can’t not notice there’s been something on your mind since that Berkeley shooter case.” Morgan sat down on the edge of Reid’s desk so he had to look at him.

“It’s… nothing’s wrong,” Reid said reluctantly, blushing a bit in embarrassment when he considered the burned DVD buried in the back of his drawer. And the new piece of mail he’d just stacked on top of it.

“So, something’s going right? My man,” Morgan said, grinning. “Is it that actress… Lila?”

“No!” Reid said, too quickly. 

“All right, all right, someone new?” Morgan persisted.

Reid just looked at Morgan, silently imploring him not to ask further. Moran dropped his broad grin and became more serious.

“Reid, it’s not that hard to figure out there’s something pretty important going on. You’ve only been half there these last few cases. Though half of your mind is usually more than enough.”

Reid managed a weak smile. “J.J. said that yesterday.”

“You and I both know the only reason Hotch hasn’t said anything to you is because he hopes you’ll talk to someone before it becomes a problem,” Morgan warned him, flicking his eyes up to Hotch’s office door.

Reid pressed on damp palm to his thigh, feeling the flat round of his sobriety medal in his pocket under his fingertips.

“If I can’t… I’ll call someone,” Reid said quietly. “I just need to try something on my own.”

Morgan looked unconvinced, but then J.J. waved them into the briefing room, and he had to drop it. 

Reid waited just a moment before following him up. He’d received an anonymous letter yesterday, one that held a small picture of Alecia. On the back someone had scrawled, “She’s in the Dollhouse. Don’t give up.” His own tentative inquiries hadn’t turned up anything conclusive, and he couldn’t tie up the facial recognition system on an unknown person with no possible connection to an active case. Morgan was right. It was time to talk to someone.

\-----

_Garcia’s office, the next day_

Garcia stared at her computer with an unusual amount of frustration. Usually it didn't take her more than a second to figure out where to start when anyone asked her a question. This search engine or that, special access or not, password protected? no problem. With full access to databases that most people didn't dream were as easy to access as they were to her, there was little information, aside from perhaps the Defense Department, that was closed to her.

But the Dollhouse? An urban legend, thoroughly debunked, something she and Kevin had giggled about in occasional fits of geeky superiority. It wasn't something that the informed worried about. Besides, conspiracy theories were rather looked down upon when you worked for the FBI. Reid knew that. He might be occasionally naive, but he was literally the smartest person she knew. He didn't believe in fairy tales and urban legends, except perhaps about what they revealed about the human psyche. She'd heard him use an unsub's paranoia against him not more than a month ago; so whatever had made him all but beg her to look into the Dollhouse had to be recent, and had to be serious.

She glared at the screen like it had just offered her a personal challenge. Reid didn't ask her for much, and definitely didn't swear her to secrecy before making a request. She owed him enough to see if there was anything real behind the usual smoke and mirrors of a typical tall tale.

"Ok," she muttered to herself, and threw open every database and search engine she had access to. "Let's go."

\--

Even Topher Brink's enemies would have to admit he was a genius. Certifiably, objectively, it was beyond dispute. He was one of the best with neural mapping, engineering, circuitry, neurobiology, and computers. He could, and had, built his own computers from scratch, and had personally designed or improved nearly every system in the Dollhouse. He could tamper with the human mind in ways that some would have considered impossible, immoral, or downright blasphemous.

Topher just considered it cool.

It was the mind and the technology that manipulated it that was his passion, and so while the computer systems at the Dollhouse were second to none, they did not have the touch of genius about them that the chair and Doll technology did. They weren't Topher's babies. That was why, when the outer perimeter of the Dollhouse computer defenses were breached, it was only the standard Rossum Corporation measures that were brought to bear. 

\--

Garcia could see the alerts and alarms going off on several screens, warning her that powerful countermeasures were being deployed against her search. She grinned, her fingers dancing across the screen, leaving the FBI-tagged search strings going while she sent out others from dummy systems not tainted with the FBI's technology. Her searches had gone through tons and tons of conspiracy theory websites about the Dollhouse, and plenty more on Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn, Reid's mystery woman. Everything checked out neatly, too neatly, so Garcia had sent her probes deeper. 

Tripplehorn/Las Vegas/Dollhouse/UC Berkley/timeframe Jan 2010 - March 2010

\--

Topher had been about to get a new high score on Whack-a-Mole when alarms started chirping on his computer console. He looked over at it, bemused, wondering idly why in the world it would be making that particular set of beeps. He'd set up so many different alarms it was difficult to remember them all. It wasn't one of the ones relating to the Dolls, or one of the ones he'd installed so Adele couldn't sneak up on him. That meant it was...

Topher dropped his soda can and lunged for his keyboard. 

\--

Garcia was sure the FBI probes had been the ones to trip the alarms, and sent a few more commands to them to keep most of the defenses on them. Everything had a back door, a password, what the programmers used to update the system, and those were so much more vulnerable than trying to go in the front way...

\--

"No, no, no..." Topher chanted softly, throwing up more and more screens and roadblocks to the relentless searches. His eyes were wide with disbelief. This was an FBI computer trying to get in, and Rossum was supposed to have countermeasures in place for that! But this, this was like getting with a swarm of FBI wasps, like there were a dozen systems or more trying to get in at once-.

Topher blinked at the screen and chuckled.

"Cute, very cute. I don't think so, puppet master."

\--

"Take away my right hand, and my left hand can still smack you," Garcia muttered as her FBI dummy strings were shut down. She slammed up her own defenses to keep from getting backtracked, but that slowed her own search down. Time to give her counterpart something else to think about. 

\---

"Wha?" Topher said. A new window had popped up on his screen.

"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..." wailed from his speakers.

Muting the volume, and shutting down the feed, Topher took a second to crack his knuckles.

"Ok, this means war."

\--

Garcia was blinking away tears from where all her screens had flared brilliant white a moment ago, but was grimly pleased to see her remaining search strings hard at work, burrowing past facade after facade. She was less pleased a moment later when cartoon badgers started a conga line across her screen.

\--

Topher was cursing under his breath when he saw files starting to come up on his other monitor, files of the people scanned for building the imprints. They didn't have names attached to them, they were in a separate file, but Adele or Boyd was going to kill him if whoever was attacking the computers figured out who they were!

His main monitor started to flash pictures of tooth-rottingly adorable kittens, and he restrained himself from pulling his hair out by sheer force of will. 

\--

Garcia looked at the brain scans uncomprehendingly, but bounced them to her external hard drive anyway. She was getting closer. This latest search string had gotten past a real mother of a password, and was starting to search in a whole new area. Finally, things began to be collated in her results window, and she grinned in triumph.

\--

Topher felt blood draining from his face when he realized the foreign probe was actually searching within the Dollhouse mainframe itself. He launched a powerful scrambler that was going to take him hours to repair the damage, and abruptly shut down all the external feeds, plunging his lab into darkness.

\--

The Jaws theme music started to play over Garcia's speakers, and her screens began to fuzz. The information in her results window started to disappear, and she squeaked in dismay. Shutting down her feeds and dumping what information that remained into her external hard drive, she quickly unplugged it and cradled it protectively in her hands. She stared at her system in a state of shock before the automatic repair and diagnostics came online to fix what damage she'd wrought getting the information out of its impenetrable fortress.

Gingerly, she attached the hard drive to her own computer and pulled up what information she could. Whatever the guy on the other end had launched, it had ripped vast swathes of information away from her search strings. She only had a few paltry bits left. A pair of what looked like pictures of a brain, and a few word associations:

Tripplehorn imprint - Active - Echo  
Dollhouse - L.A. Flower street.  
Multi-brain imprint - base SR

Garcia sighed at the pathetic remains of her data, and printed out what she had. She sure as hell hoped this was what Reid was looking for.

\--

"Trying a new decorating scheme, Mr. Brink?" Adele asked.

Topher banged his head as he crawled out from under the desk, where he'd been soldering in some new chips to replace those he'd fried in his attempts to save himself from almost certain Adele-related doom.

"Uh, oh! The lights?" He laughed nervously. "Uh... glare! Interrupting my WoW session!" he said brightly.

Adele looked at Topher with a jaded eye.

"Which I should never be playing on company time, and will never do so again," he amended.

"See that you don't," she said coolly, and turned to leave.

Topher let out a silent sigh of relief, and quickly crawled back under the desk to save himself.

\-----

_BAU, Quantico, next day_

“I take it back,” Garcia said. She’d imperiously summoned Reid to her office with an anonymous e-mail, and had double-checked the locks twice after he’d come in. “I think it’s true.”

Reid had a wave of anxiousness and relief so strong his vision went blurry for a second. “You found her?”

Garcia hesitated, and picked up one of the folders on her desk. “Whoever is behind this has some seriously scary protection. They almost got me, but I pulled a few things out of the fire.” She presented him with the few words and brain scan pictures, and watched his reaction.

“Thank you,” Reid said, staring at them with single-minded concentration.

“I don’t know if it’s worth anything…” Garcia stopped as Reid went deathly pale. “What?”

“The scans… It’s me.”

“You?” Garcia asked.

“It’s my brain. This scan is me.”

“Of course you know what your own brain looks like,” she muttered.

“I had a brain scan after Tobias Hinkle because the doctors were afraid I’d done something when I-. After Tobias revived me.” Reid skittered verbally over his near-death experience. “I was fine…”

Reid’s mind had already made the connection, but he was slow to say it out loud. The Dollhouse urban legends said they could turn people into anything. Dr. Alecia Tripplehorn had all of his own traits and an uncannily similar background. Garcia had pulled his own brain scan from a massively well-protected server.

Alecia was him. The Dollhouse existed, and they’d made someone into him.

“She’s me,” Reid whispered.

“Oh, that is just not right on so many levels,” Garcia said, angry, but not at him.

“But how? The technology to overlay a new personality is beyond anything I’ve ever heard of…” Reid cut himself off. It was his job to do educated speculation, but this was so far outside his realm of experience that he couldn’t even hazard a wild guess.

“What now?” Garcia asked, bringing him back to the present.

“She’s in L.A. Flower Street. I should go there-,” he started, only to have Garcia interrupt him.

“Ah, Reid, I found something else while I was looking.” She sounded somewhat reluctant.

“From the Dollhouse computers?”

“No, from ours. I took a look through our own system after I tried the Dollhouse. A few agents have looked into it over the past five years, thinking it might be a human trafficking ring or something. All of the lead agents voluntarily ended their investigations because they lacked evidence. Except for one.” Garcia flipped open another folder and held it towards Reid, one that held the personnel file on an ex-agent named Paul Ballard.

As soon as Reid saw his face, he started in recognition. It was the man who’d spoken to Alecia at Berkeley!

Reid could read the man’s file faster than Garcia could tell him, but he let her say her piece anyway.

“Agent Ballard kept going after leads about the Dollhouse even after his superiors told him to stop. He was wounded in the line of duty going after a Dollhouse lead, and then kept investigating against orders. The FBI terminated him a year ago, and by terminated I do mean fired. But he dropped out of sight soon after that, and I haven’t been able to find him.” Garcia was looking more and more stressed with every word. “Reid, someone buried him deep for trying to go after these people. Even if he hadn’t been fired, there are disciplinary actions all over his file.”

Reid appreciated the warning, and nodded in acknowledgement. He’d had a feeling, ever since he’d watched the video of Alecia getting into that van, that official channels weren’t going to find her. He might not have enough experience to get the kinds of gut feelings Rossi did, but this one time, he was willing to trust intuition over intellect, and listen to the advice of a friend, rather than his own mind.

“I have vacation time I’ve never used,” he said. “I won’t make it official. I just… I have to try, Garcia. I have to do something.”

She bit her lip and closed the file. “You be careful. Or, or, I’ll tell Morgan!”

\----

_Four days later, L.A. Near Flower Street_

Reid knew it was not surprising that something as secretive as the Dollhouse was well-hidden. It would also not be surprising that asking around about it, close to its likely location, would likely get him in a world of trouble. Assuming he would even have the time to call Morgan or Hotchner for help, they wouldn’t be able to aid him from the other side of the country.

Hotchner had granted Reid’s request for a week of vacation with little fuss. Only a penetratingly knowing look.

“I hope you’ll have time to wind down,” was all he said. But the silent ultimatum on the end of that sentence was very clear to Reid. Hotchner suspected something, and he was very close to breaking some of his unwritten rules and asking Reid point-blank what was wrong. And for Hotchner to be ready to do that, things had to look pretty bad.

He had to find Alecia, and soon.

Reid had forgotten how hard it was to locate someone who didn’t want to be found without FBI resources. Garcia had gotten everything she could, and Reid didn’t want to risk another foray into the Dollhouse servers to get a more precise location. He was on his own, hoping against hope that since someone had tipped him off to this area in the first place, Alecia would find him here.

And on his fourth day haunting the sea front walk near Flower Street, she did.

Reid was walking down by a secluded part of the walk, an area screened somewhat by shorter bushes, when he saw the van. The black van that had taken Alecia away was right there in the park. And Paul Ballard was standing beside the open side door, talking with someone inside.

It had to be her. It had to be.

He quickened his pace, almost running the last half block, and Ballard turned away to meet him in the path, stopping Reid dead with ridiculous ease. They were fifteen feet from the van, and now Reid could see the vague outline of a woman in the shadows. He knew her just from the way she moved; it was engraved on his memory from Berkeley.

“Alecia!” he called, trying to get around Ballard.

“Wait,” the ex-agent warned. “Just wait, she needs some time to get herself together.”

“What happened to her?” Reid asked, restlessly sliding from one side to another, seeking a path around Paul. It was like trying to get around a brick wall, like Morgan at his most stubborn.

“She’s working through a fresh imprint, and we don’t have a lot of time to spare. Let her get herself straight, so she can talk to you,” Ballard said, persistently keeping Reid at bay. Like he was guarding her. Like a pimp keeping undesirables away from a prostitute.

“Do you know who she is?” Reid asked sharply. “Do you know what she’s being asked to do, what’s been done to her?” The urban legends of the Dollhouse were undoubtedly exaggerated wildly, but the kernels of them, what had the most likely probability of being true, made his blood run cold. 

“I know-,” Ballard started.

“How can you do this? You used to investigate the Dollhouse,” Reid demanded, over a month’s worth of frustration coming to a head. “Prostitution is a fourteen billion dollar industry in America, and that is not counting the services your new employer offers. Most of it coming from exploiting women with few other choices.”

Ballard flinched, reddening at the bald statement, but didn’t relent.

“I know her. She’s Echo, and I would never hurt her,” he said through clenched teeth. “Damn it, I’ve been trying to set up this meeting between you two since you landed in L.A.!”

Reid stopped and pulled back a bit, hesitating. Paul Ballard looked back over his shoulder and turned to Reid again.

“I was obsessed with her too.”

Paul’s words froze Reid in his tracks, and he forgot how to breathe for almost thirty seconds. 

“I was FBI. But I guess you already know that by now.” Ballard sighed. “I wasn’t smart enough for the BAU, but I was persistent. I’d been looking for the Dollhouse for years, off and on, but I hadn’t exactly been getting anywhere fast. Then some anonymous source sent me her file. This college student who had disappeared from the face of the planet, named Caroline.”

Reid’s eyes strayed to the shadowed, long-haired figure in the van, but Ballard put out a hand to stop him from getting any closer. 

“Just listen,” Ballard said fiercely. “She wanted me to warn you, okay?”

Reid took a quick calming breath and backed off slightly. “Okay.”

“Caroline wasn’t the only one. There were others who had just vanished, but you know the statistics for finding missing people. Their files had almost nothing on them, no leads, almost nothing to follow up on. So I had to get creative. The Dollhouse was supposed to be for the rich, so I found a mob peon who was willing to rat out on his bosses’ entertainments. And for once I thought I was getting good intel, things that were actually getting me closer to finding the place, and finding her. Even my next door neighbor was helping me out just by listening…

“I persuaded a friend to look up Caroline’s files on the FBI databases. And they were _there_ , for maybe ten whole seconds. And then I watched them get deleted right in front of my eyes. Not long after that, my mob guy set up a meeting between me and what was supposed to be one of the Dollhouse contacts.”

“It was a trap,” Reid stated.

“I had to kill three people and walked out with a bullet in my side,” Paul said solemnly. “I thought I had just gotten too close and they were trying to warn me off. Mellie, my neighbor, she was the one helping me out after the FBI suspended me for going off on my Dollhouse search alone. I thought she was my only friend after I was out of work.” He paused for a second, and his expression twisted in pain. “She was a Doll. A sleeper agent that they could turn into an assassin with a code phrase. And my informant? Also a Doll. 

“I got a little too close for comfort, and the Dollhouse turned everything against me. My friends, my job, and I didn’t know who to trust. I’m just damn lucky I don’t have any close family, or I don’t think the Dollhouse would have hesitated a second in using them against me too.”

Reid shuddered, his too-vivid imagination painting the scenario his closest friends and teammates unwittingly reporting his findings, or a Doll nurse being put in charge of his mother’s care. He worried about paranoia now, considering his mother’s illness, but how would it be if everyone _were_ truly out to get him?

And to think a month ago he would have dismissed the entire scenario as the byproduct of a psychotic break.

“You’re a hell of a lot smarter than me, with most of the pieces of the puzzle. I had to join them and work from within to have any chance of helping Echo. I don’t know what they’d do to you,” Ballard said.

“Paul?” Alecia – Caroline – Echo called from the van. “I’m ready.”

Ballard pointed firmly at a bench set facing the sea, and Reid reluctantly sat. When he did, Echo finally emerged from the van. She was wearing a pink sundress and her hair was carefully pulled back, looking as far from the professor Reid had met at Berkeley as he could imagine. But there was an expression on her face that he recognized immediately, and she moved exactly how he remembered.

“We don’t have much time,” Ballard warned her, and took a few steps away to give them the illusion of privacy.

Echo crossed the distance to join Reid on the bench, unexpectedly hugging him, pulling him into a tight embrace before he could protest. She was stronger than she looked, and smelled like salt air.

“I missed you,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you came to find me, Spencer.”

Reid forgot to breathe so long that Echo had to thump him on the back to remind him of the rhythm.

“I tried to get here earlier,” he managed. 

“It’s ok. I know how hard you work,” Echo said earnestly. “It’s important, and I get it, I really do. Spencer, Paul told you-.”

“I understand.” That was said more than a little desperately. As much as Reid sometimes wanted to be like Morgan and break down doors to get things done, he knew his strengths. He could not put his friends or family in danger to immediately rectify Echo’s impossible situation. She clearly had some kind of plan. 

“But if the Dollhouse could get to my team, could we try to go higher instead?” he asked. It would be very difficult for the Dollhouse to imagine who he might contact, if he was clever about it. And they could not compromise someone who they could not predict.

“I’d like to, but we found out Rossum is running the Dollhouses, and they’re compromising people in the government, trying to twist things for their own benefit. Paul and I are trying to figure out who and how. Once we know who’s safe…”

“Then you can move on Rossum,” Reid finished her thought, easily following her line of thinking. The Rossum Corporation was only the latest in corporations who attempted to influence the government, though apparently they had the most frighteningly effective tools at their disposal: the human mind. “What can I do to help?”

“You know people. You know their motivations, and what makes them tick. You know when something’s wrong,” Echo said, meeting his eyes, her own gaze intense.

“But if these people are imprinted to believe something different… The beliefs will have changed and I should be able to pick it up,” Reid said, answering his own question.

“It doesn’t have to be an obvious change.”

“It would be better for Rossum if it wasn’t.” 

“You understand.” Echo smiled, relieved at his immediate comprehension. She had kept an arm around him as they talked, her fingers entwined with his, whispering in his ear like they were flirting lovers. It was probably so any bystander watching would be fooled. But Reid held her hand tightly in his as they talked, and she squeezed back, muscles shaking.

“Echo! We have to go,” Ballard said in warning.

Echo turned towards Ballard with an entreating expression on her face, and he backed off reluctantly.

“He has something for you, Spencer. Take it. After three weeks, use it. It’ll give us a night together. We need the time to talk,” she said quietly.

“Three weeks?” he protested.

“So they won’t suspect anything. Please, I want to see you again.” She leaned in and kissed him softly before he could protest. If he would have protested.

“I’m- sorry,” Reid gasped when Echo finally pulled away. He touched her temple when he said it, and she understood instantly. She covered his hand with her own.

“I’m not, Spencer.” She looked back at Paul, and got up to go back.

“I believe in you,” Reid blurted, not wanting to lose her again when he’d spent so much time trying to find her. She smiled at him and slowly pulled her hand away. 

Ballard strode forward and shoved a packet of papers into Reid’s outstretched hand as Echo got back in the van. Reid was still staring after them when they drove out of sight. Only then did he look at the gift Echo had given him.

\-----

_L.A., inside the Dollhouse van, a few minutes later_

“Echo, are you sure?” Paul asked for the twelfth time.

“Paul, I have a few psychologists, a serial killer, a thief, a fanatic, a chef, a few girlfriends, and a midwife in here. Of everyone, Spencer is the only one who’s been quiet and let me do my own thing without getting pushy. When I say I know him, I mean I’ve crawled around inside his head and he’s let me use everything he has to keep everyone else in line.” Echo closed her eyes and hugged herself hard. “And he understands. He knows. And he still came to find me, knowing that I know everything about him. What does that say?”

Paul sighed and turned into the underground garage.

“Three weeks?” he asked.

“Three weeks.”

\-----

_BAU, Quantico, Garcia’s office, two and a half weeks later_

“She wants to meet me, and the only way I can do that is to be a client. She’s monitored too closely for me to see her outside of her engagement times, and I can’t get inside the Dollhouse without getting caught,” Reid explained quickly.

“Reid-.” Garcia was looking over the packet he’d been given in L.A. with increasing dismay. It contained everything someone needed in order to pass a Dollhouse inspection of its clients. The records Garcia could fake, the exorbitant fee Reid had promised to pay, but the last item on the list… “You have to have a face-to-face interview with the head of the Dollhouse.”

Reid went quiet.

“They’re going to be monitoring that room, I guarantee it. And if for some reason they don’t, this person is going to see your face!”

Which would essentially have Reid either on tape or with a witness showing he was essentially hiring a prostitute. It wouldn’t matter if Reid were engaging an “active” just to talk; lives and careers had been destroyed with less. And Garcia knew Reid was well aware that with that destruction went any chance of helping the mysterious Echo.

“What else can I do?” Reid asked softly. “I need to see her.”

Garcia looked closer at him, seeing the prominent shadows under his eyes, and the way his clothes hung on his too-thin frame. Frowning, she made her decision. Reid had been working himself into a wraith these last few weeks, both on the case and off of it. When he wasn’t with the team helping to track down murderers, he was watching political shows or traveling to D.C. to sit in on any public political function. Too much more of this and he’d just collapse. Hotchner had been angling at her for some kind of handle on Reid’s odd behavior, and Morgan had been all but haunting Reid’s desk. And those two were just the most obvious. J.J., Rossi, and Prentiss were no less worried, and even Kevin knew something was going on. 

“Ok, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get back into the Dollhouse mainframe – don’t you dare interrupt me, Boy Wonder – and I’m going to co-opt someone who’s otherwise elsewhere so you can pose as them and don’t have to go into this den of snakes,” Garcia said firmly.

Reid shut his mouth on his protests. “Thank you,” he said with profound gratitude.

\-----

_L.A. Dollhouse, Topher’s office, a little while later_

A tiny kitten appeared on Topher’s desktop. He looked at it with bemusement, wondering if Ivy had put it there as a joke. Then the kitten looked at Topher and batted at his chat program icon. Topher paled as he remembered the signature of the person who’d invaded his files two months ago. But if that person was looking to do the same thing, she wouldn’t have wanted to talk. He clicked.

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** I don’t know you, other than you have an amazing set of firewalls protecting some pretty heinous stuff, but you’re going to talk to me anyway.  
 **ChairGod:** !! You didn’t actually get stuff out of my system.  >:-( 

_Bluff, Topher, bluff!_ he told himself frantically

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Sweet pea, don’t kid a kidder. You caused a few minor problems, but I got what I was looking for.  
 **ChairGod:** What do you want now?

Topher delicately set up a few search strings to try to find the location of his mystery FBI hacker.

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Stop trying to backhack me, or I will rain down fiery electronic death upon your motherboards.  
 **ChairGod:** Not if I get to you first! :-P  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** I’d love to throw down threats all day, but I have things to do.  
 **ChairGod:** You think I left that info in the same place?  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** You think I’m after the same info?

Topher considered what another intense cyber-battle would cost him. He didn’t think he could bluff Adele a second time. Maybe there was still a way to get out of this with dignity intact.

 **ChairGod:** If you’re not too greedy, I might give you one for free, so you don’t have to go looking for it.

Looking for it, and bashing through the rest of his systems to find it… Topher shuddered at the thought.

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** So sweet! ;-)  
 **ChairGod:** It’s not for nefarious purposes, is it?  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** You’re one to talk.  
 **ChairGod:** We’re just talking about info.  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** I’m sure you are…

Topher looked nervously down at the exposed panel to the guts of his computer under his desk. He’d been trying to update the Dollhouse computer security since the attack, but the imprints usually needed his attention first. He was still repairing damage from QueenOfAllKnowledge’s last invasion. His last-ditch efforts to protect his data had been a little too strenuous. The idea of having to explain to Adele DeWitt why the Dollhouse servers had been compromised by the FBI filled him with dread. Not to mention showing weakness to another hacker could be suicide, professionally and socially. And Topher didn’t have so much of a social life that he could afford to give it up.

 **ChairGod:** Tell me what you want.  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** I want to set up an engagement. So who’s not using their privileges?   
**ChairGod:** Don’t try a sting, FBI, it won’t work. That’s heat you don’t want.  
 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Not business, strictly personal, and not like that, you pandering perv.  
 **ChairGod:** …

Topher considered the wisdom of what he was doing even as he was doing it. Queen’s accusations had stung, but it was either one FBI agent getting his dreams fulfilled, or a full-on attack on the Dollhouse servers. One engagement, if the active was prepared to defend herself against capture along with anything else the client wanted, might be possible, and would spare him the Wrath of Adele.

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Don’t sulk, you know what’s going on in there.

He knew. He wasn’t an idiot. He just damn well wasn’t going to send something to her without seeing what he could get in return.

 **ChairGod:** Who’s your chosen active?

There was a long pause.

 **QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Echo.

Topher pulled the files Queen wanted as fast as he could. Too much was going on with Echo these days. He just knew he didn’t want to be on her bad side if things went down. 

**QueenOfAllKnowledge:** Well? Yes or no? Don’t make me get virtual.  
 **ChairGod:** ;-) [File Attached. Connection Terminated.]

\--

Back in Quantico, Penelope Garcia scanned the files to a fare-thee-well before opening them. The only anomaly she found was on the last page. It was an invitation to a weekly World of Warcraft instance. 

\-----

_L.A., Mondrian Hotel, Two days later_

“Remember, you’re Conrad James, and you’re already checked in. He visits this area of town a dozen times a year, but has his assistants handle all the details. No one should recognize you.”

Garcia’s words were Reid’s last warning before he had boarded the plane, his last connection with his team. He’d taken more vacation time, granted by a particularly stone-faced Hotchner, and had to bear a gauntlet of worried glances from the rest of his friends when he’d left the building. That was the last support he’d had, barring many worried voice mail messages from Morgan and everyone else. 

If things went well, he might be able to explain himself to them after this trip. If things went poorly, he thought he might not be in a position to tell them at all.

Reid paced the rich rooms of the penthouse suite once to get a feel for the space, before sitting down in one of the chairs in the outer room. He didn’t want to go into the bedroom, didn’t even want to mention it. He’d agonized over the decision to come, wanting to see Echo (it was amazing how easily he’d accepted her name as Echo despite knowing her as Alecia for so long) warring with powerful ethical and moral questions.

Despite her implied assurances that she would remember him no matter what imprint she was given, he had nightmares about her walking in the door with no sign of recognition on her face, having been wiped clean and made into the girl of Conrad James’ expectations.

Or worse, with her walking in with his own personality in full force, making him confront himself in a way he wasn’t prepared for.

But he owed it to her. No one should be forced to deal with his memories of schoolhouse bullying and constant isolation because of his intellect. No one else should have to face caring for a sick mother or endure his father leaving.

Another part of him was whispering reassurances through the worry and fear. He’d seen with his own eyes how together Echo was, how determined and strong her personality, even under the overlay of dozens of other minds. And though she wasn’t _him_ , she still _understood_ everything about him as deeply as a person could. Better than Hotch, better than Morgan. She understood why he’d put his mother into care, and why he wrote daily letters but couldn’t bring himself to visit. 

She knew why at times he was almost frantic to distribute knowledge to his teammates, because there was always that lurking fear that one day he wouldn’t be able to. That he’d be sunk too deep in paranoid fantasies to recognize his friends.

He didn’t want to be one of her clients, someone who wanted something real without having to work for it. Reid didn’t want to her to look at him and see just another greedy soul. He couldn’t be that. 

Someone knocked on the door, interrupting his reverie. Reid jumped up to answer it, moving quickly enough that he could ignore his shaking hands. Peering through the peephole, he saw Echo, alone, in a frighteningly short dress for his peace of mind. Logic asserted itself a second later; she would have to arrive dressed as Conrad James’ usual girl. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he opened the door.

Echo stepped in and closed the door behind her, throwing the deadbolt before turning to face him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he managed back.

Echo looked even better than she had when he’d seen her by the ocean, confident and knowing. And beautiful.

The opposite, as Reid expected, was not true of him.

“What the hell have you been doing to yourself, staying up for five days straight?” Echo asked.

Reid actually laughed weakly at that. “It’s been hard,” he acknowledged obliquely. “And I’ve been working a lot.” He led her to the coffee table where he had stacks of folders of his results. Senators, representatives and their staff. Agents, officials, and officers. All of them background checked and profiled as best he could, looking for changes in their behavior.

Echo flipped through them briefly at random, shaking her head in wonder.

“You didn’t have to do all this. Spencer, when did you _sleep?_ ” she demanded.

“Infrequently, I think.”

“You didn’t have to kill yourself to do this.” She looked acutely distressed at the magnitude of what he’d done.

“Is it what you’re looking for?” Reid insisted.

“Yes, it’s perfect, but-.” Echo stopped herself and pulled Reid down beside her on the couch. “It’s exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

“Anytime.” He meant that, and meant it far more sincerely than he had anything else for a long time.

“Ok. Ok, while we’re here, let’s get some room service,” she suggested suddenly, as a moment of silence stretched out between them.

Reid blinked at her in bemusement.

“Conrad usually does, and I bet you haven’t eaten today,” Echo guessed accurately. Reid couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He’d been too nervous on the flight, and breakfast hadn’t been possible to think about.

Echo ordered for them with the ease of long experience, and then put the myriad of folders away in her enormous handbag.

“Come on,” she said, tugging him towards the table. “If you faint from hunger, we won’t be able to do anything.”

Reid thought his heart was going to stop. Something must have shown on his face, because Echo squeezed his hand in reassurance.

“I would never hurt you,” she said.

“I know.” But his heart was back to racing at her words. He knew he liked her, had been nearly obsessed with her, but he couldn’t forget what Echo had been through, and who she was carrying in her head.

Echo pulled back as the food arrived, plying him to “get his strength up” as she told him about life in the Dollhouse.

“It’s only fair. I know way too much about you,” she’d teased. Reid had taken that in the spirit in which it was given, and done as she asked. In between bites, she described the dream-like Doll state, her trusted former handler who was now the head of security, and the burgeoning romance between two of the Dolls that transcended every imprint. When she described the technician who’d invented the imprinting chair, Reid had to break in with a comment.

“I think Garcia’s been talking to him. That’s how she got James’ profile,” he interjected.

Echo grinned; she knew enough about Garcia to recognize the joke. “No wonder Topher’s been acting so spooked!”

Everything she said let him build up a picture in his mind of the good parts of her day. He didn’t need to imagine the bad parts. He’d seen enough horror in the last few years to fill in the unsaid blanks.

When the meal was just a memory, Echo subtly nudged him away from the dining room. He didn’t quite realize they weren’t doubling back to the sitting area before they arrived in the bedroom. Reid almost protested automatically, his fears about this evening coming back to haunt him, when Echo kissed him. There was no hesitancy, but also a hint of self-consciousness that made it _real_ to him. She wasn’t being a professional, she was being Echo.

He didn’t want to stop, though he knew he should, when she guided them in to sit on the end of the bed. Echo’s hands were on him, light but sure. She knew exactly what he wanted, how to get him to relax, and paradoxically that paralyzed him.

Reid had promised himself that this wouldn’t happen. He had to remember that she’d been imprinted as a seductress many time in the past, and that now she remembered anything. He had told himself to treat her with the care and respect of a rape victim, and not to ever take the slightest advantage because she was carrying him around in her head. That wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, and he couldn’t be someone who’d use her like that. No matter how sincere it felt, or how good.

Echo felt him pulling away, going cold in fear, and wrapped herself around him, too strong for him to escape.

“No. Stay,” she insisted.

“I can’t. Echo, I can’t-.”

She kissed him into silence, prolonging it every time he tried to speak, until they were both a little breathless.

“You can, because I want you to,” Echo said, catching his gaze and holding it with her own.

“But-.”

She silenced him again.

“I have a lot of people in here,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “And of everyone, you’re the only one who ever helped me keep everyone in line, instead of competing for space. You helped me, every minute of every day. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know if I’d have been able to find myself. You helped me remember.”

That put an entirely different complexion on things.

“And if I didn’t want you here, I know sixty-seven ways to kill someone with my bare hands,” Echo added pointedly.

“Oh,” Reid said. That was all he could think to say.

Echo kept holding him as he worked it through, feeling him relax and begin to thread his fingers through her hair in wonder.

“What happens afterward?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she said, but her eyes filled with a rush of liquid heat as she held back tears.

There wouldn’t be another night like tonight for a long time. It was far too dangerous to meet again; this single time was risky enough. What the Dollhouse had done to Paul Ballard would be nothing on what they’d do to Reid if they suspected he was involved in plotting their downfall. And Echo would face even more horrific punishment if she were found out. Until she had a chance to put Reid’s hard-won information into play, this one night was all they had.

He didn’t waste any more time.

\--

Spencer was gentle. Echo knew he would be, because this was rare for him, and special. But knowing he would be was nothing like feeling it, gentle, patient, and hesitant. He was reverent with her, treating her as something precious, always looking to her to see what she liked, what _she_ enjoyed. She was a puzzle to him, and she let him take all the time he needed to figure her out. 

And he was very, very clever. Even with everything she knew about him, he could surprise her. And that was unexpectedly wonderful.

He was so thin, almost bruised-looking when she coaxed him out of his clothes, and ashamed of himself. Echo didn’t let him dwell on his fears, just urged his hands back to her flesh. Spencer was completely devoid of the personal vanity that had driven so many of her clients in the past. It was his mind that drove him, and in his mind that he lived. He was using that to love her, because he thought there was no other way he could satisfy her. His selflessness almost made her cry.

She hid that feeling of pity behind the determination that he’d have everything she wanted to give him. And more.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, only once, as if afraid words might break the spell. But his hands said the same thing, lingering and caressing her back, her thighs, learning what pleased her best as she leaned into his touch.

He wasn’t very practiced, but Echo didn’t care. She had experience enough for the both of them, and everything he was trying made her feel loved. Echo returned as good as she got, crying out when he found a sensitive spot, making him gasp when she enveloped him, slowly, so slowly, both wanting to make it last. When he cried out his release into her hair, she was there with him, as close as they could be.

\--

The dawn light had never been more unwelcome. Echo stirred at Reid’s side, curling up close to him, keeping him warm in the air-conditioned chill of the room.

“Hi,” Reid said softly. Echo stirred and threw an arm around his chest, effective pinning him to the bed.

“’Morning,” she mumbled, opening her eyes to slits and smiling up at him. Reid hugged her close, trying to burn this memory into his mind. He wanted to be able to bring it out during the lonely times ahead. He knew there were going to be a lot of them. From Echo’s deceptively casual grip on him, she was doing the same thing.

All of that was shattered when the phone rang. Echo leaned over him to get it, and the view was… distracting.

“Hello?” she asked.

Distantly, Reid could hear the voice of Paul Ballard.

“Echo, I’ve give you as much time as I can. It’s time for a treatment.”

“I’ll be down soon,” she said shortly, and dropped the phone in its cradle.

But Echo seemed in no hurry to leave.

“I wish…” she started, and then trailed off.

“What?” Reid asked, barely audible.

“That this was all over.”

“Me too.”

They stayed in each other’s arms for a few more precious minutes, before a reluctant sense of duty made them stir. Echo had her clothes on in a trice, and brought Reid’s folders back with her into the bedroom.

“Which ones, do you think?” she asked, fanning out the files like cards. Reid unhesitatingly picked the three most likely to be under Dollhouse influence. They’d been saving that for last, knowing it was the final thing that bound them together out of necessity. All of that was gone now, and Echo had to go.

“Spencer,” she said, leaning forward to embrace him and kiss him softly. “I won’t forget you.” It was the greatest gift she could give him, and he knew it.

“Neither will I.” Reid’s throat closed, and he could barely get out, “Echo.”

She kissed him hard, and pulled away so quickly he almost missed seeing her wiping away tears. In another minute, the door had opened and closed. She was gone.

“I love you.” The words echoed around the empty room. Spencer Reid curled up in the depression on the bed that still held traces of her warmth. He watched the sun rise over the City of Angels and hoped the next time he saw it, Echo would be with him.


End file.
